What has the 1934 Evelyn Laye comedy Evensong, in which an Irish opera singer gives up her career for love in Vienna, got in common with the 1995 thriller Mute Witness, in which a woman sees a murder committed in Moscow? They were the first and last movies of Alec Guinness. In the first, he appeared uncredited in a crowd scene; in the second, he spoke briefly from the shady interior of a car as a Russian mafia boss and was billed as 'Distinguished Mystery Guest'.

Thus a great career began and ended in anonymity. His modest Who's Who entry (mentioning eight plays, seven films, two TV series) ran to a mere 18 lines as compared to a whole column each for Richardson, Olivier and Gielgud. Between 1946 and 1995, I saw all of his 40-odd movies, and between 1951 and 1990 I saw him about 15 times in the theatre. Weirdly, his stage failures, especially Hamlet and Macbeth, come more immediately to mind than his triumphs (eg Ross, Habeas Corpus).

Conversely, I've largely forgotten his many weak movies, yet can replay in my head his four great Ealing comedies - Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Lavender Hill Mob, The Man in the White Suit, The Ladykillers - Tunes of Glory (his finest performance) and a half-dozen others.

Guinness's childhood was Dickensian and before the war he adapted Great Expectations for the stage. After the war, he became a star in screen versions of Great Expectations and Oliver Twist. His last major screen role was in Little Dorrit and his last movie performance of consequence was as the recluse in the jungle who compels the hero of A Handful of Dust to read Dickens to him forever.

Guinness shared Dickens's great gift for mimicry, of which Peter Ackroyd has written: 'It is often said of mimics that they can only successfully imitate characters whom they admire or in some way care for; and it is true of Dickens, too, that he literally became the characters and friends whom he mimicked. That is why, even in his greatest villains, there is more than a trace of fellow feeling and sympathy.'